


Love Me Or Leave Me Alone

by zeldadestry



Category: My So-Called Life
Genre: Community: 100_women, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-15
Updated: 2013-05-15
Packaged: 2017-12-11 23:50:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/804677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But they started talking again, after that, playing confession, really, saying all the things to each other they would hide from absolutely anyone else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Me Or Leave Me Alone

**Author's Note:**

> 083, "Here", for 100_women fanfic challenge  
> Title taken from a line in Jay-Z's "PSA"

The stupid thing is, she can’t even remember what it was she was so upset about that day. A combination of things is her best guess, like a fight with her mom paired with someone harassing her at a show. All she knows is she ended up on the Chase’s doorstep, pleading with Angela. “So I called Sharon and Rickie and Tino, like a thousand times each, but no one was around. And I had to talk to someone, ok?”

“It’s totally cool, Ray,” Angela said, taking her arm. Rayanne let herself be led inside, did what she was told when Angela said, “Sit down. You want something to drink?”

“Rum and coke.”

“Ha ha,” Angela said, already heading into the kitchen. “I’ll bring you a soda.”

But they started talking again, after that, playing confession, really, saying all the things to each other they would hide from absolutely anyone else.

 

Angela and Corey are just ridiculous. Rayanne watches them from a distance, sometimes, in the hallways at school, or across someone’s crowded living room at a party. They’ve always got their arms around each other, looking into each other’s eyes, carrying on some whispered fervent conversation like they’re the only two people in the world and they don’t even care. 

 

“I love him so much,” Angela says. They’re sitting outside school, during their free period, pressed together to share warmth against the cold. “But I still have this, like, intense reaction.” 

“To what?” Rayanne elbows her. “You know I can see you blushing, right? You know anything I’m gonna imagine is way messier than whatever you’re gonna tell me.”

“When Jordan Catalano looks at me,” Angela blurts out, finally finishing the thought. “I just- melt I don’t want to want him, you know?”

“Oh, I so know,” Rayanne says, craving a cig, a shot of whiskey, the certainty that, if she let her hands wander, palms stroking, fingers tickling, Angela would welcome the touch.

“I seriously think I would, like, want to die if I didn’t have Corey. And then I hate myself for still letting Jordan in.”

Winter sucks. The skeletal branches of the trees depress her like nothing else. “So you’re sleeping with him.”

“With Jordan? Oh my god, no! There’s nothing, no kissing, nothing like that, we don’t do that, no! But I do- I listen when he talks to me about how much he misses me, and we stand real close, and sometimes he, he takes my hand, kisses my hand, and that’s almost worse, you know? I mean, I feel just as guilty.”

“Do you think Corey would be upset, if he knew?”

Angela exhales and Rayanne watches the warm puff of air dissolve. “Yeah, I think he would be.”

“Then you have to stop, if you care about him. Otherwise, you’re being selfish.”

Angela snorts. “Because you know all about that.”

“Yeah.” Rayanne nods. “Yeah, I do.” 

 

Angela’s turned on her side, probably already asleep, so Rayanne gets in to her own bed as carefully as she can. It’s been a long night. They’d been at a club, waiting for the next set of a show, when, it seemed like out of nowhere, it definitely had shocked her, Angela and Corey started yelling at each other and then he was storming off and Angela was handing Rayanne a ten and saying, I need a fucking drink, please get me one from the bar. 

Her eyes have only just closed when Angela says, “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“Seriously, I really appreciate this. My parents would’ve been so pissed if they knew I was drinking.”

“How do you feel now?”

“The room stopped spinning.”

Rayanne smiles. “That’s good.” She turns towards her friend, taps the tip of Angela’s nose with her finger. “Angelika,” she sing songs. Angela murmurs into her pillow. “What? I didn’t hear that.”

“Sing for me?”

Yeah, that makes Rayanne feel like a superstar, brighter than anything else in sight. “A lullaby for my lovely little Angelika?” Angela nods. She sings Moon River and then Somewhere Over the Rainbow, because both of them are pretty. Despite their sadness, the songs still seem to offer a possibility of more, not here, not now, no, but somewhere, someday, because Angela’s gotta be feeling pretty crappy about where she is tonight, metaphorically, if hopefully not literally. 

 

“Your voice-” Angela’s own voice is husky, cried out, Rayanne knows, but it’s so damn sexy, and she lets herself imagine, yeah, if they’d been here all night, fucking, if Angela had screamed herself hoarse, god, yeah. She brings her fingertips to Angela’s collarbone, traces its length, dares to duck down and rest her lips at the soft skin at the base of her throat, just for a moment. “I love your voice,” Angela whispers, like it’s the biggest secret she has, like she’s even ashamed to share it.

“Thank you,” Rayanne says, though it’s not at all what she wants to say. I love everything about you, she thinks. Everything. Angela shifts underneath her, squirms, really, and Rayanne looks at her, sees her frown, and retreats, back to her own side of the bed. 

They lie in silence until Angela speaks again, still whispering. “I feel like you need something from me, more than I can ever give.”

“Are you sure?”

“What?”

“Sure you can’t give it?” Rayanne rolls over on her side, props herself up on an elbow so she can look down at Angela. “Like, if I kissed you, right now, what would you do?”

“Push you away.”

“So if I parted my lips and took your bottom lip between them, you wouldn’t like it?”

“I don’t-” Angela closes her eyes. 

“Just say it,” Rayanne says. “You can tell me. I know what I want and it’s ok, however you feel about it, I can take it. I just, I want to know, ok? I’ve spent two years wanting to know.”

“I don’t-”

“You don’t want it?” 

Angela shakes her head. “I don’t know if I do or not.”

“Oh.” Rayanne giggles, she can’t help it. “You’re too perfect, you know that? That’s the only honest answer in the whole world and of course it’s the one you choose.” Angela sighs, and Rayanne wants nothing more than to comfort her. “Don’t worry, pretty, perfect Angelika. Tomorrow you’ll wake up and, before you know it, Corey will be knocking on your front door, apologizing for whatever happened last night and begging you to take him back, because he can’t be happy unless he’s with you. And the whole universe will go back to how it should be, and I promise I won’t ever talk about kissing you again.”

Angela turns on her side and wriggles closer until her back’s flush against Rayanne’s front. Rayanne drapes her arm over Angela’s waist. “I don’t want you to make that promise,” Angela says.

Rayanne lets her hand trace patterns over Angela’s belly. “You don’t?”

Angela shakes her head. “Because I might-”

“Yeah?”

“What if I do want it, and you never ask again?”

Rayanne drifts her hand up to squeeze Angela’s breast, to rub her thumb back and forth across its slope. “And what if I stop asking and just touch you, huh? What do you say to that?” Angela gives her the best answer possible, she takes Rayanne’s hand and draws it down her body, leaving it at the band of her borrowed pajamas. “Yeah,” Rayanne says, slipping her hand underneath, shivering at the wet heat she finds. She presses a finger slowly inside Angela. “You know I’m in love with you, right?” She sucks at the nape of Angela’s neck, bites her hard enough to bruise. 

“Yeah,” Angela says. “I know.”

Rayanne hears the sadness there, knows exactly what it means, even if she’d rather not. Angela doesn’t feel the same way, and she’s sorry for that, she doesn’t want to hurt Rayanne. It’s a minor victory at the same time that it’s a monumental disaster and Rayanne’s pretty sure this is all going to end up badly but, for right now, with Angela rocking her hips forward like she wants more, wishes Rayanne could fuck her deeper, she’s taking whatever she can get.


End file.
